What do you do for a living? What do you do for a life?
Two separate questions? Maybe.
Let’s take the first one first. And the larger view for a
moment.
Economists in the United States are claiming that the US is
recovering from what is now being called The
Great Recession. If slightly hopeful, what labor and employment statistics
chronically leave out for –ahem, political reasons? —is that the people who
have given up looking for employment, and they are many, are simply dropped
from the statistics. That means the following numbers should but don’t take the
full picture of employment realities into consideration. In other words the
real unemployment percentages are higher. Traveling in the UK and Australia in
the last few years, I know some of what I will share here applies in other
modern economies though numbers vary.
Women are said to have regained all the jobs they lost a few
years ago but men are still 2.1 million jobs short in this third quarter of 2013. That roughly translates to
6.8% unemployment for women and 7.7% for men.
Economists have long known that the recession (officially
declared over way back in June 2009), hit men the hardest and some have dubbed
that a “man-cession,” occurring alongside a “she-covery.”
Why the gender gap?
There is a good deal of segregation in the job market with
women and men working in different industries and even in different areas of
the same industry.
Lower wage industries, like retail, education, restaurants
and hotels have been hiring the fastest with women predominating in those
areas. Construction and manufacturing, sectors dominated by men, have yet to
recover. With increasing automation and erosion of unions, some of those better
paying jobs will never be recovered.
In health services and education where job growth has been
greatest there are some good-paying jobs such as nurses and physical
therapists, however, most are low paid jobs such as home health care aid. Of
the 1.6 million jobs created in the U.S. since 2009, women hold 1.1 million
of them.
Even with this kind of job growth there is still a steady
drop in overall family income. And much has been said but little done to
address the runaway income gap between high paid executives and those lower
down the food chain, just one piece of the growing inequity undermining the
middle class created after WWII by the now rapidly departing “Greatest
Generation.”
Anecdotally, I’ve heard the words "downsizing" and "right
sizing" and "lay off" and now "furlough" more times than I can count. I wonder if
the statistician job sector has grown fast enough to keep track?
This year’s Gallup Poll study told us that 7 out 10 people
are not happy or passionately engaged with the work they do.
In my field of life coaching and organizational consulting,
I hear the stories behind the statistics. Those who are in transition have
become the norm and those still on board with shrinking companies, government
agencies and non-profits—all three sectors—are being asked to do more with
less.
What to do? Probably lots of things, all requiring that
sticky wicket called “political will.”
Let’s assume for a moment that the American people decided
that these are unacceptable ways to live in the Land of the Free and Home of
the Brave. There would probably be some agreement about reducing CEO salaries,
creating a taxation system that restored what created the middle class in the
first place, providing even more incentives for entrepreneurs and small
business, which employs the majority of people.
One thing I’ve not heard much about lately is the unoriginal
concept of the four-day workweek, though government furloughs are creating zero
day weeks at the moment. A four-day workweek and job-sharing that would bring more
people into or back into the workforce. With a fairer distribution of
compensation pegged to the real cost of living, could we get the work done by
more people but fewer hours per person? In other words, fulfill the old promise
of more leisure, more civic involvement and more family time for both men and
women; what I consider the real hallmark of a modern affluent society.
Now we are entering the realm of the second question: What
do you do for a life?
Twenty years
ago I was editing a book about what working parents wanted most out of their
work life. Right after fair compensation it was flextime. In other words,
people wanted to have more control over their work life, so that other pursuits
and passions could be experienced and balance out their picture of the good
life. Things like being engaged parents, more active in their kids’ schools,
neighborhoods, communities, civic organizations or personal projects-- and not having to wait
until retirement to have that whole life.
I’ve found this desire for a more balanced life to be
widespread when I take individuals through the Passion Test to arrive at their
top five passions or what is most important to them. Some men are passionate
about providing for their families, but not at the expense of having less time
to spend with their partners and children. Traditionally, many men have equated
success with big salaries. That’s changed. Women want and need more time for
themselves as they are taking care of everyone else, on top of being employed,
(and often underpaid).
As men and women, from young adulthood to senior status, we
may not be able to restructure our work lives over night, but one thing is
clear, the first step is identifying what would be ideal for us before we can
begin to actively pursue it for ourselves and our families in today’s dynamic
and ever changing work world.
Randy Crutcher
administers The Passion Test, now used in 49 countries to help people get clear
about and live their passions. There is also a Passion Test for helping people
get clear about what would be ideal for them in their work life, an invaluable
tool when seeking employment or creating a new enterprise. Call him at 209
923-0502 to inquire.
